The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Tuesday news and notes

Although the Supreme Court didn't grant cert on this S.D. Fla. case, it's a pretty big attack of the 11th Circuit's waiver rule. Justices Kennedy and Sotomayor would have granted cert and Justice Kagan, joined by Ginsburg and Breyer, had this to say about the 11th Circuit's rule -- that issues not raised in the initial brief are waived, even if the defendant tries to file a supplemental brief based on a new Supreme Court case decided before the government even response:

And as the above citations show, the circuit courts—once again, bar the Eleventh—have routinely followed that practice in the wake of Descamps.There is good reason for this near-unanimity. When a new claim is based on an intervening Supreme Court decision—as Joseph’s is on Descamps—the failure to raise the claim in an opening brief reflects not a lack of diligence, but merely a want of clairvoyance. Relying on that misprediction alone to deny relief to an appellant like Joseph while granting it to the defendant in Descamps ill fits with the principle, animating our criminal retroactivity law, of “treating similarly situated defendants the same.” Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314, 323, 328 (1987) (holding that new rules “appl[y] retroactively to all cases . . . pending on direct review”). And indeed, insisting on preservation of claims in this context forces every appellant to raise “claims that are squarely foreclosed by circuitand [even] Supreme Court precedent on the off chance that [a new] decision will make them suddenly viable.” Vanorden, 414 F. 3d, at 1324 (Tjoflat, J., specially concurring). That is an odd result for a procedural rule designed in part to promote judicial economy.Perhaps for such reasons, even the Eleventh Circuitdoes not apply its default rule consistently when this Court hands down a new decision. Sometimes, as here, the court views its rule as pertaining “uniformly and equally to all cases,” so that a panel becomes simply “un-able to entertain” any claim not raised in an initial brief. United States v. Bordon, 421 F. 3d 1202, 1206, n. 1 (2005). But other times, the court abandons the rule without explanation—including, at least twice, for Descamps claims. See, e.g., United States v. Ramirez-Flores, 743 F. 3d 816, 820 (2014) (addressing a Descamps claim raised “for the first time at oral argument”); United States v. Estrella, 758 F. 3d 1239 (2014) (addressing a Descampsclaim raised first in a Rule 28(j) letter after all briefs were filed); United States v. Levy, 379 F. 3d 1241, 1244–1245 (2004) (per curiam) (acknowledging “a few decisions wherethis Court apparently considered a new issue raised in a supplemental brief ”). Thus, criminal defendants with unpreserved new claims may be treated differently within the Eleventh Circuit, just as they are as between theEleventh Circuit and every other court of appeals.I nonetheless agree with the Court’s decision today to deny certiorari. We do not often review the circuit courts’ procedural rules. And we usually allow the courts of appeals to clean up intra-circuit divisions on their own, in part because their doing so may eliminate any conflict with other courts of appeals. For those combined reasons, I favor deferring, for now, to the Eleventh Circuit, in the hope that it will reconsider whether its current practice amounts to a “reasoned exercise[ ]” of its authority. Ortega-Rodriguez, 507 U. S., at 244.

The University of Miami Law Review will be hosting Justice Stevens and Miami State Attorney Kathy Rundle. Here's the summary: The University
of Miami Law Review Symposium, entitled “Criminalized Justice: Consequences
of Punitive Policy,” will take a critical look at how our nation’s laws have
been increasingly criminalized over the past 30 years, the negative
consequences of this criminalization, and recent positive developments. We will
explore this topic through a variety of subjects, including immigration,
homelessness, sentencing policy, and race and social class. The Symposium will
feature Keynote Speakers Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and Miami-Dade
State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. The Symposium is scheduled for
Friday, February 6, 2015 and Saturday, February 7, 2015 on the University of
Miami campus in Coral Gables, Florida.

The Southern District of Florida blog was started by David Oscar Markus, who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.